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Monday, December 19, 2016

8 Shaft Broken Twill Tea Towels

A couple of times a year I like to put on what I like to call a ‘comfort warp’. This is a warp that I know will pose no surprises and will be a relaxing weave and a chance to work on my loom posture and to ensure I’m using a good throwing technique. If my mind isn’t on the pattern I can really concentrate on sitting up straight, throwing the shuttle correctly and depressing the treadles fully.

Twill is my comfort pattern weave and an 8 Shaft Broken Twill pattern fits the bill of comfort perfectly. Striped warp tea towels are always a good project for me, it uses up small amounts of coloured cotton and because I usually choose to do only 6 towels at a time, its a quick project and perfect for the Etsy Shop.

These are the results of pulling 10 white 2/8 cotton ends then 4 ends of either pink, red violet, turquoise or peach sequentially. They are a lovely fresh looking towel.

I like to add more interest to the towels by weaving a weft striped border starting at about 4.5 inches from the beginning of the towel. This allows me to have 1.5 inches for a turned under hem and then a couple of inches before the stripes begin. With these towels I chose to weave the weft stripes in turquoise and then using the same sequence in red violet on the following tea towel. I thought that the pink and peach were too pale to show up well.

The goal was to have 3 pairs of tea towels that matched, each one containing 1 turquoise striped towel and its red violet partner.

I mentioned at the beginning that tea towels hold no surprises for me, but this time I got a pretty good one on my last towel. I ran out of warp! I have pre-measured strings that I use for my projects and this time I grabbed the wrong one......so the Sesame Street song ‘ One of these things is not like the others’, really rings true.